El Tigre 2
by dionysianDaydream
Summary: It is said that a real hero never dies and, as the drug cartel exudes an ever tighter grasp over Miracle City, its people could use one now more than ever. *Due to be continued, if I can ever get over being bored by working on serious stories.*
1. Chapter 1

Manny Rivera passes through the rusting, overgrown iron gate entrance of the Miracle City Public Cemetary with a bouquet of poinsettias tucked under his arm. Although his jacket sticks tightly to his skin in the humidity, and his jeans catch every burr from every patch of untrimmed grass he must tread through, he does not stop until he reaches the welcoming shade of a familiar gnarled Jacaranda tree. Beneath the tree are two gravestones, in the space between which he squats to set down the bouquet.

"Mother, father. So much has happened since we last spoke." Manny says, bowing his head as if avoiding looking directly at the gravestones. Truth be told, he felt something close to shame. "I haven't visited you in a while. For that, I am sorry."

He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a slightly dampened cigarette.

"It's been raining so much lately that I wonder if this will even light." He says, casting his parents a quick smile. With his other hand, Manny grips his lighter and tries it once, twice, three times before he can get it lit. "I've been so busy these days..."

He stops, realizing that he was just coming up with excuses, which was something his father always warned him against doing.

"I promise to visit you more often. No excuses."

Emiliano Suarez, a retired police chief with a commanding presence that defied his gradually withering body, had been standing behind Manny for quite some time. He clears his throat loudly enough to get the young man's attention, but not so loud as to disrespect the deceased. After all, he too was weathering the loss of his beloved daughter Frida.

Manny sighs. "There isn't a day that goes by I don't miss you, _mis padres_. " He says, then flicks the loose buds of his cigarette at the Jacaranda.

On the walk back to Emiliano's car no words are shared among the two, and neither of them felt the weightlessness that usually came with their increasingly irregular visits to the cemetary. Instead, as the chief pulls on the stickshift and the old sedan lurches forward, what drove them forward was their mutual desire for vengeance.


	2. Chapter 2

The greatest miracle of Miracle City is that it was able to survive this long. Rampant air pollution, violent crime, and teenage delinquency were all time-honored traditions of the bustling megalopolis, but the rising drug trafficking trend was a whole different beast all together.

"It has gotten to the point where they even sell on the streets in plain daylight." He comments aloud gruffly, as they take an off ramp leading into a particularly depraved area of the city – one affectionately referred to by the locals as '_Diablo_'s Drive'.

Overcrowded tenements verging on complete collapse line the uneven sidewalks. Shattered windows, bullet marks and graffiti tags are the telltale signs of the _Diablo_, its breath a dense smog that carries a faintly sulfuric stench, billowing down from the smokestacks of distant factories like fog rolling down the face of a mountain. Its growls were the product of unfiltered boomboxes and car radios, fading away as suddenly as they would emerge because the sedan struggled to maintain the forty miles per hour speed limit.

"How long have you been driving this hunk of junk around anyway?" Manny asks, pretending for a moment that the absence of a window on his door was not a fair enough indication by itself.

"You would be surprised to hear about the things this hunk of junk has been through, Rivera." He banks sharply to the left, narrowly avoiding a collision with a crossing churro cart. "Check the glove compartment. There is something that might interest you."

Manny pinches the handle and with some effort manage to pry the compartment open. Inside, he sees a stack of envelopes held together by two rubber bands and a cleanly polished badge for the Miracle City Municipal Police. After digging around a little, he comes across a leather bound diary that is small enough to fit in his pocket.

"This belonged to my father, didn't it?"

"No, it was your mother's." Emiliano replies simply, and suddenly takes on a more weary demeanor. "It is something I have held on to for a long time."

"Have you had it examined by the police yet?"

At a red light, the sedan stutters to a stop. Emiliano turns his head to look at Manny.

"Realize, Manny, that I _am_ the police, as far as this case is concerned." He says matter-of-factly, at first only barely hinting at the raw emotions that underlined his words. But then he adds, with his expression contorted into a sneer, "People are killed every day in Miracle City, so they don't have time to pick up on cold cases."

"_Sen__õ__r_ Suarez, what are you saying?"

He growls more loudly, to block out Manny's words, "Especially not for a _Diablo_ boy like your father."

Manny clutches his fists impulsively. In Miracle City, an insult like that usually lead to a fight or even murder. Manny; however, was raised differently. Instead of reacting, he calmly looks straight into the chief's eyes and says with complete conviction, "My father was a good man." Firmly establishing as the stoplight turned green that there was no room left for anything else to be said about the character of Manny Rivera's father.

When the smog at last clears and the smell of which is replaced by that of freshly baked corn and herding livestock – aspects of a world free from the devil's reign - it is then that Manny flips open the journal to its first page and begins reading.

_It is the 15__h__ day of February, seventeen years ago..._


	3. Chapter 3

Two men armed with machetes stand erect in front of a warehouse situated on the side of a dirt road. Every now and then they take turns scanning the area for anything out of the ordinary, walky-talkies in hand. But for hours, and to the relief of the untrained goons, there is nothing to report.

That is until around noon, when they spot a girl barreling down the road on a motor scooter, kicking up a storm of dust and rocks in her wake.

She pulls to a stop across the street and parks her scooter there, next to a stop sign with faded lettering and a streetlight that had long ago been rendered inoperable by an improvised slingshot device (the creation of which involved a brick and a pair of socks).

The girl with a head of unusual blue colored hair removes her goggles as she casually approaches the two men.

"Do either of you guys know the way back to Miracle City?" She asks them.

They scratch their heads, no doubt perplexed by the girl's brazenness in the face of strange men holding sharp objects. Miracle City was in the direction she had just come from, across miles and miles of nothing but desert wilderness.

Frida Suarez cocks her hip and crosses her arms, unsure of whether the men had even heard her, who are now exchanging looks and whispering in Spanish amongst each other.

"Well? I've got a huge craving for some churros right now."

Who was this girl really? The two men who had never been in this kind of situation before were probably beginning to think, which meant that everything was going according to plan.

For you see, while the guards were scratching their heads over what to do with the strange girl, her accomplice has situated himself behind the warehouse. He had been on the scooter with her until she got within clear sight of the two men guarding the warehouse, jumping off and walking the rest of the way by cover of the cloud of dust.

He tries the door, but the knob won't budge. Locked.

After peeking his head around the corner to be sure that the girl was doing okay, he flicks his hand to summon the retractable steel claw along the index finger of his right glove.

"Just hang on a bit longer, Frida." He mumbles to himself then jams his claw into the keyhole.

With a few turns of his wrist he manages to undo the lock and gain access into the warehouse.

Once inside, he quickly scopes out the room. No two walls are more than a few inches apart, and the trapped in air carries the unmistakable scent of a substance that must have passed through there very recently. In fact, he could have just missed it.

_Cocaine_. The word pulsates in his mind like flesh around a cactus needle as he shuts the door behind him.

Locating a makeshift wooden table with a design similar to a sewing bobbin tucked away in one corner, he examines it more closely to discover a yellow piece of paper marked with a list of addresses.

_These are all in Miracle City. Are they drop off points for the new shipment?_ The fact that some of the listings featured bright red check marks next to them while others struck him as particularly interesting.

Manny jots down all of the listed addresses in his journal and carefully sets the page back the same way he had found it. After doing a quick search around the empty warehouse and finding nothing else of value, he presses his ear against the garage door to listen out for Frida's signal.

But he does not hear anything save for the sound of his own heartbeat. Not a peep from Frida or the guards.

Just as he is beginning to suspect that something had gone wrong, the warehouse's back door swings open.

"Hey, what are you doing in here, kid?" He hears the young man that enters ask, followed by the dull click of a handgun being loaded.


	4. Chapter 4

"Rivera, we are here."

The cigar muffled voice of Emiliano Suarez jars Manny back to the present. As it was nearing sundown they had arrived at an old-fashioned adobe house hugging the edge of the southern rainforest.

The place had not seen love in a long time, that much was clear. The second story had crumbled apart entirely, leaving just a barely intact box-shaped first story with boarded up windows and walls that were probably once painted salmon pink, but have long since faded to a near gray.

Manny shoves the car door open and sets one foot out, before peering back at Emiliano. The strained look on his face made it obvious there was something weighing on his mind.

"My mother mentioned that my father wrote the addresses he found at the warehouse in another journal." The old man nods his head slightly. "Has that journal ever been found?"

E"No. But it might make a big difference if we did have it." He replies, staring off into the jungle vacantly. "From what we were able to gather, _they_ made a point to record all of their activities."

He exhales deeply, releasing a thick cloud of tobacco smoke from his nostrils.

"So they would have something to pass on to the next generation." He laughs despite himself. "It is too bad they neglected to pass on the location of these journals, which could be hidden anywhere in Miracle City, the jungle, the desert."

He shrugs as if it was a hopeless endeavor not worth even entertaining the notion of.

Although Manny could not blame him for feeling that way, knowing that by _they_ he was referring to more than just Manny's parents. He knew that more than a decade ago there existed an entire underground coalition of persons devoted to challenging the flow of narcotics through Miracle City. Those numbers have since dwindled over the years to just a courageous remaining few, who are forced to operate in the shadows, lest they put their lives and those of their loved ones at risk from the growing influence of the cartel.

And one such person was waiting within the decrepit house, one that was apparently willing to come forth with some new information. Her one catch; however, had been that Manny enter alone.

Emiliano stops him just as he sets his hand on the doorknob, and issues a grim warning:

"Listen, be careful about what questions you ask. Treat it like an interrogation, so leave out anything personal. Most of all, keep in mind that inside of this house there is somebody that has killed before, and will not hesitate to kill again if they feel the situation demands."

"Don't worry."

Manny prepares the claws that line the inside of his father's gloves, that were just as handy at picking locks as they were for slicing through skin.

"If the situation demands it, I will not hesitate either." He says, and Emiliano opens the door for him.

"Get as much as you can out of her, Manny."

The sound of the door closing behind him reverberates across the room. The room that is pitch black, with the musty scent of the aging furniture hanging in the air like death in a mortuary.

An eye, part of the disembodied half of a person's face glaring at him through a narrow beam of light that shines through a crack in one of the windows. The conjoined lips are as black as the pitch black of the room, and the pupil of the eye that narrows like a hawk focusing on its prey; on him.

"You look just like your father, Manny." Zoe Aves says without a hint of emotion - as blank as her unblinking eyes, or the pale, moonlit hue of her skin.

Then, like the fuse on a stick of dynamite suddenly becoming lit, her facial expression twists into a villainous smirk and her voice takes on a mocking tone when she sneers, "Or, would you rather be called El Tigre?"


	5. Chapter 5

"Who are you?" Manny asks the shady woman.

"Zoe Aves." She says and cackles shrilly, as if the mere thought of having to introduce herself to anyone was a preposterous joke. "You might say I was a friend of your father's."

A high-heeled black boot emerges from the shadows as she takes a step toward him.

"But that would be putting it lightly. Our relationship was well beyond platonic." She says with her voice now turned raspy, rolling over each word like one delicately savoring each bite of a banana-stuffed _empanada_.

Manny leers at her, but she is undaunted.

"Do you think I am lying, you little brat?" She takes another step toward him. "Did your father not talk about me at all? Frida always did have him by the belt loop."

He points his clawed hand at her and assumes an aggressive stance.

"I came here under the pretense that _I _would be the one asking the questions." He says in an attempt to regain control of the situation, recalling Emiliano's words – _treat it like an interrogation_. "I do not care about what kind of a relationship you had with my father, I just want you to tell me what you have on the _chingados_ who killed him."

Zoe laughs at this, being so unaccustomed to her prey talking back to her so fiercely, let alone allowing them to survive more than five minutes within her presence.

"You should watch your mouth and think twice before making demands." She says, flashing a machine pistol that is strapped to her right wrist at him. "The old man was right when he said I could kill you right now, if I wanted to."

He flinches at the reference to his conversation with Emiliano. The realization hits him that despite how much this vile woman openly mocked the memory of his parents, it would be stupid for him to engage an enemy of unknown strength. Especially if they might potentially have some valuable information to share.

"Look, I don't want to fight." He says after taking a deep breath, withdrawing his claws and letting his arms fall to his sides. "All I want is the truth."

"And if you did know, then what would you do?"

"I would bring the guilty to justice. He deserves to be punished."

She tilts her head backward, her lips forming an exaggerated frown. "So you would not kill, even to avenge the deaths of your own parents?"

"Of course not! I could never face my father again if I -"

"If I told you the name of the man you are looking for right now, you would just wind up dead. Your way of thinking was their downfall, too"

"Killing has always been the way in Miracle City, but like my father I wish to set an example. Anyway, how can I tell you are not letting on more than you know?"

But she really _did_ know the identity of the killer, she insisted. She goes on to tell Manny that she had in fact been spying on the cartel to which the assassin was contracted to, and was aware of the existence of said contract well in advance. That she would go from acting so evasively to spilling her guts was a bit off-putting, but at the same time Manny could feel his pulse quicken from excitement as she went on.

"I knew there was a hit worth fifteen grand on two of our people, but I could not find out who specifically before it was too late. Hits are only organized by the higher-ups, and they were as heavily guarded back then as they are now. Too tucked away. I was still just a girl in way over my head, really."

As she is about to prattle off into oblivion, Manny reminds her of his one basic question:

"Who did it?"

And rather than become irritated at the interruption, Zoe smiled so that her teeth shone through the darkness.

All this time she had remained barely out of arm's reach of Manny, and yet he still caught only slight glimpses of her: of the side of her face closest to the light source, of her leg, of her arm, and at last that smile which would have sent the usually more perceptive and distrusting Manny out the door in an instant, had he not been so blinded by his desire for retribution.

"I will tell only if you do me one small favor." Are the exact words that future legends would tell were then spoken by Zoe Aves. Words that meant suddenly Manuel Rivera Jr. had to choose whether he would put his faith in a complete stranger's empty promises, a decision which would ultimately change his life and the shape of Miracle City forever.


	6. Chapter 6

A man wearing a tiger mask and skin tight black leather suit is standing atop the roof of St. Pablo's Cathedral. He does not have to wait long joined there, by someone suddenly emerging from behind him like a shadowy specter.

The specter wraps its arms around him from behind, and kisses him on the side of his face slowly with its dark, soul sucking lips.

"Black Cuervo..." El Tigre unshaken by his brush with the specter starts to say but she shushes him by holding a finger up to his lip.

"You know you can just call me Zoe." The specter whispers into his ear, and after kissing him again, continues, "Or you can call me anything you want, but not Black Cuervo."

"We have to go now, there's no time for this." He breaks free of her grasp and walks to the edge of the roof. "Ortega is on the move."

Zoe grunts in annoyance. "Fine." She says, and pumps back both of her arms, releasing the hang gliding mechanism that could be folded up neatly into a backpack.

Down below, flanked by a small unit of gray-suited guards is their mark - Edgar Ortega, a primary shipper for the cartel - walking down the front steps that lead into the cathedral, toward a limousine so clean that it sparkled, parked on the dusty curb.

"Split up and follow him as closely as you can. Whatever business he is up to at this hour, you can be sure it isn't charity."

As Ortega and his entourage pack into the limo and it starts to drive away, El Tigre climbs down the side of the cathedral to tail them by foot. Zoe glides from rooftop to rooftop, the black of her helmet and the back of her 'wings' providing a perfect camouflage when she has to climb along walls, aided by the concealable dual hooks that protrude from the toe of both her boots.

Neither of them have any trouble keeping up with the slow moving vehicle through the back streets of Miracle City, lined by pubs and night clubs that even to this hour were lit up in bright, flashy neon colors; a convenient front for men in hoods stalking the narrow alleyways waiting to let slip a poisonous rock or two in exchange for a few pesos, or dollar bills from some naïve tourist if they are lucky.

The limo pulls up to the edge of a cliff overlooking the vast desert, on the outskirts of the city.

Once Zoe assumes a safe position atop a nearby tenement and removes her backpack, she turns on her walky talky. It buzzes to life with the sound of Manny Rivera's voice.

"I am in a secure position, over."

Zoey is about to respond when she is suddenly pulled backward then thrown across the roof, and the walky talky falls out of her hand.

Upon turning around, she comes face to face with the man who had pushed her.

"What are you doing here, _chica_? And wearing such a suspicious costume as well." He says in strongly accented in English. "Spying on Ortega?"

She points the machine pistol in her glove at him. "Stay back. One step closer and I will kill you."

Her intention was to intimidate him long enough to make an escape, but the plan backfires when the man draws a handgun from his side holster without warning and shoots her in her leg. The leg gives way and she falls.

"Tell me, where is your friend? You know, the one who gave me this." He says, indicating the scar across his right eye.

"I work alone." She says, wanting more than anything else to ensure Manny's safety.

So her heart skips a beat when just then the walky talky, lying barely out of reach of her wounded foot, receives an incoming transmission.

"Was that you screaming? What happened? Black Cuervo, please answer!"

When her assailant walks past her to reach the device, Zoe slashes his leg with the talon hooks in the boot of her other leg. They tear through the fabric of his pants and pierce the skin beneath them, and she tugs her leg repeatedly so that they become further embedded into the underlying layer of muscle and bone.

Hollering from the intense pain and trying in vain to pull away from the Cuervo's grasp, the man with the scar frantically expends the remainder of the bullets in the chamber of his handgun. Two bullets hit the ground, one puts a crack in and is deflected by the visor of Zoe's helmet, and the other two make a direct hit in her rib cage and just below the knee of her malevolent leg.

Zoe Aves drifts then fades into unconsciousness as blood continues to pour out of her body; boot hooks still attached to her flailing shooter's leg as more of Ortega's bodyguards flood out unto the room from the complex's main stairwell.


	7. Chapter 7

St. Pablo's cathedral lay dormant save for a few lost souls still praying for redemption into the wee hours of the morning. They mostly keep their admitted vices to themselves, but one man seated to the front of the pews mutters with his face shone upon by the tall red candles set up around the space, rocking his entire body as if he were literally possessed by a holy spirit. So enraptured is he in his feverish devotional that he does not notice the young man in a hooded jacket take a seat on the empty bench behind him.

"Are you a guilty man, Ortega?" The young man whispers to he who had once helped ship hundreds of millions of dollars worth of narcotics between the US and Miracle City, and also directly brought about the deaths of hundreds in his rise to power. In Manny's eyes, if anyone had reason to feel guilt it was Edgar Ortega.

The infamous drug lord, although less intimidating now, with his salt and pepper curly hair and thinning black robes, jerks out of his self afflicted hypnosis and wheels around to look at the shadowy masked face of El Tigre, sitting with his hands clasped out in front of him so as not to appear conspicuous.

"The rumors about the hero of Miracle City rising from the dead were true after all, it seems. Now what business could you have with an old priest like me?"

"I came to talk to Edgar Ortega, the murderer and crook, not Ortega the parishioner."

His expression sinks. "I see." Ortega the unshaken says.

The page from Zoe Aves's journal that she had lent Manny earlier had lead him to the exact church where the fateful mission that resulted in Zoe's kidnapping began. Truth be told, Rivera had kept tabs on the converted kingpin of St. Pablo's for a long time, but never before had any reason to suspect that he may have played a role in his father's murder until now.

"I know that your henchmen managed to capture Black Cuervo one night." Manny Rivera Jr. says while looking around infrequently to scout for any unwanted onlookers. "What were you doing that night she followed you, and what did you do to her?"

"It was a meeting with one of the partners. Franco, who you must know was killed some fives years ago. Just to talk about transport arrangements." Ortega describes the events of that night without pause, as if they were still fresh in his mind. "As for the girl, my men locked her away in the old prison, thinking that El Tigre would come back for her eventually, and we could spring a trap."

"Did he come back for her?"

"No. Unfortunately for Ms. Aves, he did not." He says, and hesitantly adds, "What that man, Ernesto, did to her was unforgivable, and I pray to our Father every day that he be saved from the path of evil he has chosen. The path that I too once followed."

He looks up at the great statue of St. Pablo which stands in the center of the cathedral. Ruthless criminal scum or not, many things still weighed heavily on Ortega's shoulders. It was a weight that even the pure light of the catholic saint had so far failed to wash away.

But Manny Jr. shows he is far less forgiving than God when, in a fit, he stands and, with a firm grasp around the collar of Ortega's frock, lifts him off the ground. "Do you think wearing these black robes and praying to a statue at an altar will excuse you of your crimes? You sicken me. Now tell me, who is Ernesto?"

_POW!_

Suddenly, a bullet whizzes into Edgar Ortega's mouth as he opens it to respond to the aggravated Manny Rivera, instantly killing him after a few bloody, choking gasps. Manny ducks for cover and lays low on his bench, to avoid a second shot that was aimed at him.

"God damn it." He says, looking at the lifeless body of Edgar Ortega hunched over the bench, his blood pooling on the sun baked, chipped orange stone tiles below.

_There goes my only lead..._

Manny peers over the edge of the seat and looks upon his pistol-packing perp pushing past a pair of surprised witnesses to escape through the front door.

"You won't get away that easily."

Manny lets his own Desert Eagle out of its cage as he jumps over the bench and sets off running after the shooter into the chilly night. But the gunman stops at the foot of the front steps and turns to unleash a barrage of bullets. Manny quickly hides behind a wide column to avoid being hit.

Meanwhile, with the shooter's attention fixed in the opposite direction, the woman sitting on the front seat of a car parked on the curb can safely scroll down her window and, producing her pistol, land a clean shot at his leg.

He falls unto the hard uneven pavement with a yelp, clutching his wounded leg in the middle of the dimly lit street. As El Tigre approaches him, he pleads for his life.

El Tigre shakes his head. "Deal with this guy Anita. There's no one else as far as I know. And call in an ambulance, Ortega is dead."

The woman who had fired from in the car, Anita Suarez, emerges and expertly clamps a pair of handcuffs unto the cowardly criminal, then looks at Manny expectantly while the police sirens of other units blare in the distance.

"Anything new?" The older sister of Rita Suarez and aunt of our Manny Jr., asks flatly; by now used to new leads going nowhere but still never giving up hope.

"If this guy were not such an incredible shot I might have had more, but I did get a name." Manny says as he pulls Anita out of earshot of the killer. "Ernesto. He is the man who tortured Black Cuervo, and if my hunch is right he had something against my father, which gives him a motive."

"Ernesto? I'll check the police archives tomorrow and tell you if anything comes up." She re-enters the squad car and picks up the transceiver and is about to call for a medical dispatch but she stops and smiles warmly at Manny. "I don't know if pappy tells you enough, but he's very grateful for all that you're doing. And so am I."

The masked avenger just nods, finding himself quite uncomfortable with emotional situations like these. But after a while he breaks the awkward silence by asking if he could help load the suppressed shooter into the back of the squad car. She agrees, and expresses her concern about how quiet he was now, when just a while ago he was desperately begging for his life.

Manny discovers why. "He's dead, Anita." He says, vanishing by the time the ambulance can arrive to confirm that it was death by acute cyanide poisoning.


	8. Chapter 8

It has been said of Miracle City that life only begins as the sun is going down, and this is the way of things for a variety reasons. Be it to escape from the hellishly hot sun, horseflies the size of your pinky finger, or the long arm and unwavering eye of the law; to experience Miracle City by day then to see it by night was like stepping between two completely different worlds.

Personally, Manny preferred the night because to him the setting just made everything feel more laid back and relaxed, neither of which he felt since receiving a mysterious message at the police station earlier that day, inviting him to an isolated location in a rough neck of town, alone. Emiliano insisted he not go, but the son of El Tigre knew no fear, and was not about to turn down anything that could potentially lead to new information.

He finds himself walking along an alleyway that cut between a bustling cabaret, the techno dance music playing within muffled and barely audible through the walls, and a boarded up grocery store. A single lightbulb flickers on and off up ahead, intermittently casting the narrow space in the terrifying totality of the nighttime realm.

"Hello, Manny."

A tall, dark denizen of the realm emerges behind him. One that is cloaked in black leather, wears a black wing-like cape, and has only the faintly glowing paleness of the bare skin around her bright red lips showing from beneath a helmet with a headpiece curved to resemble a falcon's beak.

He recognizes who it is immediately, and turns to face her slowly. "Black Cuervo...you're the one who left that message at the police station?" ...with an address scrawled in thick black strokes of permanent marker on the inside of a plain gray envelope, that seemed to have magically appeared on Emiliano's desk.

"In case you do not know already, I have tabs on this city, Manny," she hissed, "I have been keeping track of your every move since our first meeting, one way or another."

He squints his eyes at her, nostrils flared.

"A man is dead now, because of that silly errand you had me run," he fumes.

"I am aware of Ortega's death, Manny. In fact, I was there to witness it personally." She moves so close to him that they share the same air space, and he can detect an strong aroma of thickly layered perfumes coursing from her. "All is going according to plan, I assure you."

"All according to plan? Why are you treating this like a game of chess?"

She touches her finger on the tip of his nose.

"Well isn't it, though? My devoted pawn."

Manny throws a punch at her, but in one quick motion she grabs his arm, pulls it behind his back, and trips him up to that he falls facefirst into the dusty red earth.

When Manny tries to reach for his gun, she stomps on his hand and scoops the protruding pistol up.

"You...witch...!"

She plants a foot on his back and, with her hand still holding his arm behind him at an awkward angle, he was at her complete mercy.

"Go ahead and kill me, Cuervo. But then who will do your dirty work?"

"Don't be silly, boy. I have no need for a weakling," she said with a smirk, threatening to dislocate his arm with a subtle turn of her wrist. "I have an army at my disposal."

"But you can't call upon this so-called army...because the bosses know all about your band of freaks...which is why they hired a gun to keep an eye on Ortega...so you had me talk to him instead."

Another minute hand motion sends waves of excrutiating pain along Manny's shoulders.

"You want revenge on...Ernesto, don't you? He's the one who shot you, isn't he? And...tortured you...and made you what you are now!"

"Shut up! You know nothing, El Tigre," she shrieked as her leg and grasp were trembling, "you know nothing!"

He turns his head sideways, getting his ear in the dirt to look at her.

"Maybe I know nothing because you refuse to tell me anything, Zoe Aves. If we are to work together, this aura of secrecy has to-"

Without any warning, the Black Cuervo twists his arm out of its socket.

His carefully articulated speech was cut short by a heavy grunt, and he can only quiver in pain as his captor backs away.

"While your arm heals, there will be plenty of time for reading this journal, that once belonged to your parents."

She throws it unto the dirt beside his hand. It is a pocket-sized, leatherbound thing just like the other journals, but with some pages that were seared to a crisp, or torn.

"We will be in contact. But remember, Manny, there is no 'we' or us working together," she says, glaring at him as if he were an unsightly worm, "you have your own agenda, and I have mine."

"You...wicked..."

With great difficulty he rolls over onto his back then feels for the pistol strap at his side, but his gun is not there.

Zoe had disappeared without returning it.


	9. Chapter 9

_Hold on to love, and it will lead you back home always._

These words were engraved, in Spanish, on the inside of a gold locket Manny kept stowed away in his sock drawer. The phrase, that was passed on to him by his parents, drifted back into his conscience for the first time in a while. Through the years they had been a guiding force for not only El Tigre, but also the often overlooked Manny Rivera to call upon during desperate times.

"Father..." Manny mumbled under his breath.

Frida, entwined in the bedsheets of the Queen-size behind Manny, could sense the sadness that suddenly overtook him. Perhaps it was the way his shoulders shrunk and how he hung his head like a drooping palm frond.

"What's wrong, Manny?" She asked sweetly.

The gust produced by an electric fan on the dresser tossed around her sapphiric blue hair, spreading the perfumey scent of her conditioner throughout every corner of the otherwise dreary and unbearably odorous motel room.

"It's nothing," Manny said, then sighed. "I was just looking for the journal and came across something special, that belonged to my father."

He threw it unto the bed.

Frida reached over to take it, then held it up to the light to inspect its glossy, well-polished surface.

"It's beautiful, Manny," she commented after a while.

"He gave it to me the day I vowed to become a hero. His exact words were, _one day I won't be around anymore, so let this locket remind you of your pledge to protect the people of Miracle City from evildoers, by your honor!_"

Frida giggled. "That sounds just like something your father would have said."

"Frida, the bosses have never been this quiet before. What if it's too late? What if Zoe is...?" Manny plops unto the bed, running a hand through his greasy curls instead of completing that horrible thought. "Maybe if I had stayed, we could have fought them off together. Why didn't I?"

Without saying anything, Frida started working out the knots in the rough, sun-soaked skin of Manny's shoulders with her own smooth, pearly white palms and delicate fingers.

"You had to flee, Manny. So don't be so hard on yourself. The whole world doesn't rest on your shoulders, you know."

"But is it wrong for El Tigre to feel that sometimes?"

"Not really," Frida admitted, then adds with a smirk he couldn't see, "but if you'd rather carry around _my_ burden, I'd be more than willing to trade."

She bumped him with her bulging belly, and he couldn't help but smile.

"For God's sake, woman, put that big thing away," he said, then moved in for a kiss.

...

The latest pages in the journal that Manny Rivera Jr. had acquired from the Black Cuervo detail his father's search for her after she was kidnapped, which he read while sitting back at home waiting for his arm to mend.

He noted that if his mother was still pregnant with him at the time of their writing, there were likely still a few journals missing; scattered about Miracle City so that only someone who already knew of their existence could find them, as was the way of Miracle City's secret protectors.

But why was this journal in such bad shape? Deeply burned and torn in some places, it was unlike all of the others that had been so well looked after.

_And where is that treasured locket now..._

Manny has a few theories, and all of them are based on the suspicion that Zoe Aves knows more about the fate of his parents than she lets on.

"That woman is nothing but trouble."

If anything, the painful throbbing of his right arm in its cast only made him more determined to find answers.

There is a knock at the door, and Manny goes to take a precautionary look through the peephole.

"I brought pizza and chipotle," a bouncing pink bob cut announces cheerfully.

"Did you bring more gauze, too?" Manny Jr. says with a grin. "I can still move my arm a tiny bit."

He opens the door and in waltzes Lucida Pérez, her hands full with a miniature fiesta.

They exchange a kiss.

"Is El Tigre getting any painting done during his free time?"

Manny cocks his head in the way of an easel set up in front of the glass sliding doors leading out the verandah, and an unfinished painting of the view from there.

"I've had too much to think about over the past few days."

He helps her clear space for the food on the only table in the room, among piles of discarded scribbles and sketches. "So, what is Isis up to these days?"

"I have a gig on Friday," she says, pausing while she opens up the new jar of chipotle. "At some shitty bar downtown I've never heard of before. I don't know how I'll talk my way out of class that night, but if the label says I must..." She trails off, the pressure that comes with balancing being in a rock band, attending med school and Manny Rivera's girlfriend easily discernible from her weighted expression.

Manny grabs a piping hot pizza slice.

"Look on the bright side. At least your arm wasn't twisted out of its socket by an insane bird woman."

"That's true. I guess your life sucks much worse than mine."

The two break out in laughter between bites, but the fun is cut short by the sound of Manny's cell phone ringing.

"It's Emiliano," he says with a frown, then takes the call. One can tell from the immediate change in his demeanor that the news is serious. "I see...yes, I'll be there."

Manny looks directly at Lucida when he hangs up.

"It's about that 'insane bird woman' I just mentioned," Manny sighs. "She's really outdone herself this time."


End file.
